In the week that brilliant musician Jamie Foxx plays a genius cellist abandoned by society in The Soloist, why is it that for me actors portraying musicians on film always strikes a bum note?

Having disgorged my own views about food on film I'm delighted to see that some of you have lapped them up and served me a plateful of your own, in response to which I'll begin by saying that yes indeed I have considered the ethical dimensions of eating live cephalopods for entertainment purposes....

Whether you're watching the latest bazillion dollar epic or a tuppence ha'penny George Romero tribute flick, is it the money that makes a movie money?

Watching other people chow down may be fun for chefs and doting mothers but on the big screen it can sometimes turn a critic's tummy. And in cinema's kitchen none have tweaked the emetics so deliberately as these, my Top Ten Eat to the Beat movie moments.

Sometimes it takes another couple of viewings to recognise just how great a quiet original can be. Written and directed by Christine Molloy and Joe Lawler, Helen is the mesmerising tale of an orphan girl who probes her own identity when she is used as a stand-in during a police reconstruction of a murder, and it is nothing less than one of the best films of the year.

About this time of year I like to watch favourite films of mine such as The Devils and Local Hero and Of Time and the City at the farthest, most Northern point of the British Isles that I can reach. And this year I'll be doing so in a bus shelter...